Chapter 12
APUSH
Mrs. Price
“Don’t be too timid & squeamish about
your actions. All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the
better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Societal Changes led to Reform
Movements
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2 influences:
- Romanticism: an optimistic faith in
human nature; people are good
- Desire for order & control: nostalgia for
better, simpler time; efforts to create new
institutions of social control
Romanticism
Influences culture
 Painting: Hudson River school
 Literature:
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Walt Whitman
- Herman Melville
- Edgar Allan Poe

Transcendentalists
Importance of reason/emotions
 Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Henry David Thoreau
 Importance of Nature: source of human
inspiration; interconnectedness of man &
nature

Utopian Communities
Brook Farm (1841-1847)
 New Harmony (1825)
 Oneida (1848)
 Shakers (grew in 1840s)

Brook Farm
West Roxbury, MA
 Everyone would
share in labor
 Founded by George
Ripley
 Nathaniel
Hawthorne

New Harmony
Indiana
 Founded by Robert
Owen
 Everyone was to
work & live in total
equality
 Economic failure

The Oneida Community
New York, 1848
 Millenarianism --> the
2nd coming of Christ had
already occurred.
 Humans were no longer
obliged to follow the
moral rules of the past.
• all residents
married to each other.
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886)
• carefully regulated
“free love.”
Shakers
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Founded by Mother
Ann Lee
20+ communities in
NE & NW
Complete celibacy
More women than
men
Gender equality
Mormons
Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day
Saints
 Began in 1830 by
Joseph Smith (NY)

Mormons
Smith killed at
Carthage, IL (1844)
 Successor:
Brigham Young
took followers to
Utah
 Attracted those
who were displaced
by changes

The Mormon
“Trek”
Sources of Reform Movements
Divinity of the Individual
 Protestant revivalism: everyone is capable
of salvation
- Charles Finney (new form of revival)
- 2nd Great Awakening
- Burned Over District (western NY – new
churches formed)

Major Reform Movements
Temperance
 Public Education
 Rehabilitation
 Indian Reservations
 Medicine
 Feminism
 Abolitionism

Temperance
Believed alcohol was responsible for
crime, disorder & poverty
 Special burden for women
 Disagreement in movement (include beer
& wine, state laws)
 Cultural & religious conflict: Protestants
vs. Irish Catholics

Annual Consumption of Alcohol
Public Education
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Interest grew in 1830s
Horace Mann: educational
reformer
By 1850s: states were
adopting practice of taxsupported elementary
schools
Access & quality varied
By 1861: US had one of the
highest literacy rates
Rehabilitation
Creation of
asylums
 Goal: reform &
rehabilitate
inmates
 More humane
treatment of
mentally ill
(Dorothea Dix)

Indian Reservations
Idea emerged in 1840s & 1850s
 Could live in isolation
 Could learn ways of civilization so they
could live with whites

Medicine
Health fads were popular
 Phrenology
 Medical profession lagged behind

Feminist Movement
Women played a key role in reform
movements
 Leaders: Sarah & Angelina Grimke,
Catherine Beecher, Lucretia Mott, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 Many were Quakers
 Most began in the abolitionist movement
 Men resented their participation

1848 Seneca Falls Convention
New York
 Declaration of Sentiments & Resolutions
 Modeled after Declaration of
Independence
 Demanded the right to vote

Abolitionism

Early Efforts
- American Colonization Society (1817):
gradual manumission; sent to Africa
- Lost momentum after introduction of
cotton
William Lloyd Garrison
1831: Created the
Liberator
 Demanded
immediate,
unconditional
abolition of slavery
 Created the American
Antislavery Society
(1833)

Black Abolitionists
250,000 free blacks in North by 1850
 David Walker
- Free black from Boston
- Published pamphlet in 1829
- “Slaves should cut their masters’ throats,
should kill or be killed.”

Sojourner Truth
Freed black
 Also involved in
women’s rights
movement

Frederick Douglass
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Escaped slave
1847 purchased
freedom
Created the North
Star
Wrote autobiography
Demanded freedom &
full social & economic
equality
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
Published 1852
Best seller in US &
England
Purpose: to show impact
of slavery on families
Argument: you can’t be a
Christian & a slaveholder
Reaction to Abolitionism
Restrictions on abolitionist literature &
mail
 Southerners said UTC was untrue; wrote
proslavery books
 Violent attacks
 Elijah Lovejoy
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